MACV-SOG

Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Studies and Observation Group, better known by its acronym MACV-SOG or simply SOG, was a highly-classified and multi-service United States special operations unit that existed from 24 January 1964 to 1 May 1972. It had at least brigade size, and it carried out numerous operations during the Vietnam War.

History
MACV-SOG was founded on 24 January 1964 when the CIA gave up control of covert operations in Southeast Asia to the United States military. MACV-SOG was highly-classified, conducting covert and unconventional warfare missions against North Vietnam, the Viet Cong, the Pathet Lao, Khmer Rouge, and the Soviet Union's Spetsnaz during the Vietnam War. In 1968, their northern operations collapsed in the black year of 1968, with North Vietnam launching counterintelligence operations; they used captured SOG members to signal reinforcements, leading 456 South Vietnamese and MACV-SOG agents to their own deaths while many more were captured. MACV-SOG conducted several operations against the communist states of Indochina, sometimes launching cross-border raids into Laos and Cambodia. The group was dissolved in January 1973 when President Richard Nixon announced an end to combat operations in the country as the Paris Peace Accords approached, and the MACV-SOG ceased to exist.

The MACV-SOG's existence was covered with classified documents and information, and only in the 1990s did some documents be leaked when a senate hearing was held about the POW/MIA issue in Vietnam, with some US servicemen still missing. The MACV-SOG were involved in several classified operations in the Vietnam War, and it is truly unknown how many MACV-SOG personnel died, as agents captured by the enemy or personnel killed during classified operations would be regarded as disavowed or POW/MIA. Their operations assisted the military in the war, and it helped for the Americans to fight the Viet Cong until the US troop withdrawal in 1973.